"We created a five second delay as if you were to bleep back your DVR five seconds, that's what we did with the picture we were showing you, so that we could see in the studio five seconds before you did, so if anything went horribly wrong, we would be able to cut away from it without subjecting you to it," Smith said. "And we really messed up. And we're all very sorry. That didn't belong on TV. We took every precaution we knew how to take to keep that from being on TV. And I personally apologize to you that that happened."

Smith added that a similar gaffe "won't happen again on my watch."

Michael Clemente, Fox's executive vice president of news, blamed the incident on "severe human error" and offered his own apology.

“We took every precaution to avoid any such live incident by putting the helicopter pictures on a five second delay," Clemente said in a statement provided to TheWrap. "Unfortunately, this mistake was the result of a severe human error and we apologize for what viewers ultimately saw on the screen.”